over the United States, but principally from the West and the South.
Probably none had seen a quartz ledge before coming to California, yet
the necessity for extending a claim as far as the ledge dipped was soon
perceived, as also the taking into consideration a change in the
direction or course of the lode. Commenting on these laws and the causes
leading to their adoption, Mr. Muslin became emphatic. He said:

"No body of rough, uncouth, pistolled ruffians, such as Bret Harte
depicts the miners, would have formed such a group of benevolent,
far-reaching and comprehensive laws. The early miner represented the
best type of American character. He was brave, undeterred by obstacles,
enduring with patient fortitude the perils and privations of the long
journey of half a year by land, or a tempestuous voyage by sea;
undaunted alike by the terrors of Cape Horn or the insidious diseases of
the Isthmus of Panama. He met the, to him, hitherto unknown problem of
the extraction of gold and solved it with the wisdom and vigor which
distinguish the American. Observe that the provision against throwing
dirt on another man's claim anticipated by many years the famous
hydraulic decision of Judge Sawyer. It is another way of stating the
maxim of law and equity: 'so use your own property, as not to injure
that of another.'"

Mr. Maslin agrees with Ben Taylor that the hangings and shootings of the
period following the discovery of gold have been grossly exaggerated. On
this point he said: "I will venture to assert that in certain of the
Mississippi Valley States, in their early settlement, more men were
killed in one year than in ten of the early mining years in California."
Of lynching, he said: "There were few lynchings in California, and those
mostly in the southern tier of counties, of persons convicted of
cattle-stealing." In connection with lynching he related a serio-comic